This will go out in tomorrow's mail. I have already remitted a brief email to our congresspersons and this is my detailed follow-up:
Gentlemen:
We are writing you as private US citizens and residents of New Mexico to urge you to do everything in your power and official capacity as our New Mexico Senators/Representative, to resist any and all attempts by the Republican leadership to craft, advance, bring to a vote, or enact any form of legislation that would repeal or destroy the progressive advances of the Obama Administration, including but not limited to:
- any attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or privatize Medicare
- attempts to eliminate any hard won and legitimately affirmed LGBT rights,
- any action to reverse or eliminate laws, regulations and programs that recognize climate change or protect the environment or natural resources.
Further and more specifically:
We also urge you to resist, question, scrutinize and hold accountable any and all potential cabinet appointees.
In the same vein, we would strongly urge you to thwart any nominee to the United States Supreme Court who has demonstrated racial prejudice, misogyny, anti-LGBT bias, or who has preconceived notions about social and political issues which are likely to come before the court.
Please speak to the congress for us and many others in denouncing the agendas of such nominees and appointees whenever there is any evidence of racism, anti-LGBT discrimination or hatred, climate change denial, or other potentially destructive beliefs apparent in their resumes, history, past behavior or public statements.
We also urge resistance to any legislation, which, in the guise of “religious freedom,” would deny LGBT citizens their rights to marriage equality, military service, public accommodations, commerce, employment, or human services.
We ask you to resist any and all legislation that would allow certain fundamentalist and conservative religions the special right to deny liberty and freedom and particular aspects of full citizenship to LGBT citizens.
Further we support legislation which would secure the equal and just rights of all citizens; that would flatly reject any religious or “moral” test or give weight to the tenants of any particularly vocal belief system; freedom of religion must include all religions, not all of which share identical beliefs, and accommodate as well, those who adhere to no religion.
We also appeal to you to thwart any attempts by the new administration to single out individuals for special scrutiny or observation or surveillance based on religion, race, national origin, political affiliations, sexual orientation or gender identity.
In addition, we urge you to support re-establishing nation-wide fair and just voting rights by reversing the blatant gerrymandering and restrictions put in place by Republicans to disenfranchise minority voters; and to work to ensure that all voting districts in every state are drawn fairly and equitably and that voting laws are not restrictive.
We urge you to support LGBT rights, to protect the right of gay, lesbian and
transgender individuals to marry, serve in the military and to be free from
discrimination and harassment.
We also urge you to include protecting the right of Transgender individuals to self-expression and self-defined identity and to educate those among you to the fact that transgender individuals do not pose a threat to women or children and that draconian laws not only do nothing to protect women and children, but they also, if adhered to, would have undesirable consequences for trans and cis-gendered persons as well.
We support efforts to protect women’s health care options and not allow the Republican and conservative religious forces to restrict most or all access to health care for middle income, poor and low income women based solely on one aspect of that care.
We urge you to maintain laws and programs that protect our precious environment, land, oceans, wildlife, natural resources, national parks and monuments and other environmentally sensitive resources and to educate those among you about the real effects of climate change and the role of human activity as a causal factor.
We urge you to help ensure that immigrants, legal or not, are treated fairly and with both mercy and justice and to find reasonable and compassionate solutions for such individuals and their families.
We also urge you to thwart any attempt to initiate a witch-hunt against, or any further investigation of, Hillary Clinton.
In summary, we are asking you to be vigilant for us, to speak truth to power, and to fight for our democracy, which is not only being threatened from without, but by many of those from within who were elected, more or less democratically, to defend it.
Thank you for your service.
Sincerely,
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